Chapter 34
Dual POV
The red digital numbers on the arena clock bled down through the final three seconds.
Four to three, St. Jude leading.
Tyler Brody gathered the puck at the blue line, his head down, driving hard toward the right circle with everything Boston Commonwealth had left.
I didn't play the puck.
I stepped into his lane, loaded my hips, and drove two hundred and twenty-five pounds of armored shoulder straight through Brody’s sternum.
The impact was a violent, bone-rattling explosion of composite padding and acrylic glass that lifted Brody clean off his skates.
His helmet cracked against the dasher boards; his stick went spinning twenty feet into the air as the final horn blared, a long, mechanical shriek that shook the iron girders sixty feet above our heads.
The arena erupted.
Six thousand voices detonated in a deafening, unified roar. Green and gold confetti rained down from the ceiling rafters, fluttering through the cold air like a paper blizzard, coating the scarred ice in flashes of bright foil.
The bench emptied. Gabriel Thorne slammed into my back, his arms locking around my chest protector, screaming something incoherent over the din of the pep band. Teammates mobbed me, pounding their gloves against my shoulders, their faces flushed, their eyes wild with championship frenzy.
Arthur Vance strode onto the ice behind Coach Henrik Lindqvist, a silver trophy resting between their hands. Lindqvist shoved the twenty-pound cup into my chest, grinning like a madman.
"Captain's cup, Leal!" Lindqvist barked, slapping my shoulder pads. "Top seed in the tournament! You locked the first round tonight!"
The silver was heavy, freezing cold through my gloves.
I hoisted the trophy above my head. Forty flashbulbs popped in a blinding white wall from the media line.
The victory was an absolute, suffocating void.
The cheers of the crowd sounded like water rushing through a sewer pipe. The blood from my split lower lip dripped down my chin, warm and salty, tasting of copper and cold ash.
I had won the game. I had secured the draft ranking. The ninety-five-thousand-dollar signing bonus would clear Rafael’s clinical trust before June, and my brother would have his specialized care for the rest of his life.
I had won everything I had ever bled for.
And it was worthless.
I handed the trophy to Gabe, ignoring the reaching hands of the alumni along the boards. I turned my skates toward the gate, pushed through the tunnel door, and walked away from the flashing lights.
The concrete service underpass was deserted, the celebratory noise muffled by twelve inches of poured foundation.
I ripped my helmet off with my left hand, tossing it against the floor matting. I stumbled forward, my shoulder striking the cold cinder block of the wall, my forehead pressing flat against the rough masonry.
My breath came in ragged, burning heaves that tore through my lungs. Cold sweat soaked into the padding of my black sweater, chilling against my skin.
The paper Cross had dropped in the underpass was seared into my brain: her name, her signature, her calculated bargain to sell the cracks in my bones to buy her way to Colorado.
I had given her my soul in that carriage house. I had dropped to my knees in front of her, wiped her tears, and laid my life at her feet.
She had taken the broken pieces of my body and cashed them in.
A choked, dry sob tore from the bottom of my throat, my teeth grinding together until my jaw ached to the roots.
* * *
I stood in the shadow of the concrete pillar beside the private family exit, the cold air from the loading bay seeping through the leather of my boots.
My charcoal wool coat was buttoned tight to my chin. Inside the right pocket, my hand was pressed flat over my lower abdomen, my fingers curled in a protective grip over the linen-wrapped diagnostic test.
Beneath my palm, the biological reality was a quiet, steady fire.
My stomach churned with a slow, sour nausea that made the back of my throat burn, but my spine remained straight. I had spent forty minutes standing in the cold underpass while the arena above shook with victory horns, listening to the announcer scream Mauricio’s name over the loudspeaker.
I hadn't left.
I had refused to slip out the side door like a thief in the night.
The clack of skate blades against rubber matting echoed down the long hallway.
Mauricio turned the corner.
He was still in his home black sweater, the gold number four torn at the left shoulder, the captain’s 'C' smeared with ice shavings.
His dark hair was drenched in sweat, curling wildly against his forehead.
A fresh cut bled steadily from the right corner of his lower lip, staining the dark stubble along his jaw.
He looked like an ancient warrior emerging from a slaughter.
He saw me standing by the pillar.
His boots came to a sudden, rigid halt six feet away, his skates biting into the floor runner.
The victory, the championship trophy, the six thousand screaming fans—none of it existed in his eyes. His face hardened into a slab of impenetrable, blackened granite, his umber eyes hollowed out into pitch-black voids of lethal, defensive stone.
"You're still here," he said.
His voice was not loud. It was a flat, dead scrape that scraped the freezing air like iron over gravel.
I took a slow, measured breath, drawing the chill into my constricted chest. My fingernails bit into the lining of my pocket, but my chin lifted four inches, holding his gaze with diamond-hard composure.
"I came to say goodbye, Mauricio," I said quietly, my voice steady, stripped of tremor.
A sharp, humorless sneer curled the bloody edge of his mouth. He took a heavy step toward me, his six-foot-four frame looming over my space, radiating the suffocating heat of sixty minutes of violent exertion.
"You came to make sure the check cleared?
" he rasped, his eyes flashing with a venom so raw, so butchering, that the breath locked behind my teeth.
"You can tell Cross the scouts took the bait.
The draft projection held. You can write your little report for Colorado and tell your surgeon father that you extracted every single dollar out of the broken defenseman. "
The cruelty in his words was a serrated blade dragged across my breastbone.
A hot wave of tears burned behind my closed eyelids, but I forced my eyes wide, refusing to let a single drop fall in front of him.
He was drowning in his own trauma. He had taken Julian Cross’s forged papers, looked at the worst possible version of reality, and chose to believe it because believing that I was a monster was easier than believing he was worthy of being loved.
I wasn't going to plead. I wasn't going to get on my knees and beg a man to see my innocence when his first instinct was to treat me like a parasite.
And I was sure as hell not going to weaponize the child growing beneath my ribs to buy back his trust.
"I loved you, Mauricio," I said, each word a slow, clear strike in the quiet corridor. "I loved you without an angle, without an academic grant, and without a single condition. I looked at every broken, bleeding piece of you, and I chose to stay."
A violent spasm jumped in the masseter muscle of his cheek. His fists clenched inside his padded gloves, the leather groaning under the strain, his chest heaving with rapid, shallow draws of air.
"Don't lie to me," he snarled, his voice cracking on a ruined, jagged edge. "Not in this building."
"I have never lied to you," I whispered. "Not once."
* * *
I reached into my left coat pocket.
My fingers closed around the heavy, cold brass key to his South Portland carriage house.
I took two steps forward, closing the distance between us until the toes of my winter boots were inches from the steel runners of his skates.
The scent of his skin—cedar, fresh tape, clean sweat, and the sharp iron of blood—filled my lungs, a familiar, intoxicating presence that made my ribs ache with profound, agonizing loss.
I reached out.
I took his large, calloused, bruised right hand, uncurling his gloved fingers, and dropped the cold brass key into his open palm.
The metal struck his skin with a faint, sharp click.
Mauricio looked down at the key.
His fingers didn't close over the brass. They stayed frozen, trembling with a fine, uncontrollable shudder that ran up the thick line of his forearm into his shoulder.
I looked up into his dark, tortured eyes, holding his gaze with absolute, unyielding clarity.
"You spent four years terrified that someone was going to break you, Mauricio," I said, my voice dropping into a quiet, steady whisper that cut deeper than any hit he had ever delivered on the ice.
"You built an iron wall around your life, and you told yourself that everyone was waiting to destroy you. "
A single tear broke from my lash line, tracking hot and clear down my cold cheek.
"Cross didn't break this," I whispered, my hand resting flat over my lower abdomen beneath my coat. "You did. You are the only one who broke us."
His breath hitched sharply in his chest, his lips parting on a soundless draw of air, his eyes widening with a sudden, horrifying crack of uncertainty.
"Kiyomi—" he rasped, his voice breaking on the syllables.
"Goodbye, Mauricio."
I didn't wait.
I turned on my heel, my boots striking the concrete floor in fast, rhythmic strides, heading toward the private exit.
I hit the heavy steel push-bar with both hands. The door flew wide, and the howling gale of the February blizzard rushed in, swallowing the corridor in a blinding vortex of sub-zero wind and white snow.
I stepped through the threshold, letting the door slam shut behind me with a concussive, final boom that severed the past from the present.
I walked out into the storm, the freezing wind lashing my cheeks, my hand clamped tight over the new life growing in the dark, leaving the champion alone in the ruins of his ice.